The Landmark Monsanto Verdict May Not Have Been Possible Without Activism and Alternative Media

On Friday, a landmark case against Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller concluded in San Francisco in which a jury awarded $289 million in damages to a former school groundskeeper, Dewayne Johnson, concluding that Roundup gave him terminal cancer.

Naturally, Monsanto announced that they are going to appeal this case. However, what this case illustrates is a massive shift in the tide against the chemical behemoth. Had Johnson attempted this lawsuit just three years ago, he would’ve likely been laughed out of the courtroom.

Thanks to the relentless independent investigations and independent media, however, this is all changing.

If you get all of your news from mainstream media and cable TV infotainment, then you’re probably unaware that glyphosate (the active ingredient in RoundUp herbicide) has been linked to cancer. The World Health Organization stated in March of 2015 that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen, and California labels it as such.

However, the mainstream media chose not to heavily report this information. Thanks to those of us in the alternative and independent media, however, this information got out. Groups like March Against Monsanto played a key role in presenting this information to the masses, organizing events and pushing to break through the mainstream narrative.

The MSM addict will also be unaware that long-term exposure to glyphosate—even tiny amounts deemed “safe” by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)—can lead to liver and kidney damage.

This information has been widely disseminated in Europe whose government leaders are less beholden to companies like Roundup.

The “safe” level of glyphosate for U.S. drinking water was set at 0.7 ug/L in 1994, and this has not been revised, despite studies over the years showing glyphosate’s toxicity. For comparison, the European Union’s safe glyphosate level for drinking water is 0.1 ug/L.

Several countries have banned or restricted the herbicide’s use, and other leading nations are considering legislative bans.

Nowhere is glyphosate more prevalent than in the U.S., which uses 20% of the world’s RoundUp, or more than 280 million pounds per year. These incredible figures have to do with the fact that Monsanto’s GMO “RoundUp Ready” brands now comprise most of the corn and soybean crops grown in the U.S. This has brought staggering profits to the multinational corporation that now controls vast swaths of the global food supply.

As more research is carried out, we are finding that glyphosate is far more toxic than its maker Monsanto, along with corrupted federal agencies, have led us to believe.

What’s more, this grand deception has been confirmed.

Forty years ago the biotech giant began its own research on glyphosate, and these studies were unearthed in 2015. The documents reveal that Monsanto always knew about the human health hazards of glyphosate.

“There is now an enormous cache of evidence on both scientific and legal grounds that Monsanto in fact conducted numerous studies in the 1970s and 1980s on glyphosate’s toxicity and health risks and intentionally sealed this research from independent and public review and scrutiny.”

Equally astonishing is the fact that this body of research was given to EPA, who hid it from the public at Monsanto’s demand on the basis of proprietary trade secrets.

Internal company documents revealed in 2015, that Monsanto had tested RoundUp for potential toxicity for years but used the guise of proprietary information to force the Environmental Protection Agency into sealing those records. They knew it was dangerous but deliberately covered up their findings and brought the product to market anyway.

Independent research scientist, Anthony Samsel, obtained the documents through his senator’s office after having his Freedom of Information Act requests successfully thwarted for years. As he described from information found in those documents, “Monsanto misrepresented the data and deliberately covered up data to bring [glyphosate] to the market.”

Indeed, it has been Monsanto’s own skewed and faulty research on glyphosate that has allowed its approval for use on food crops by the FDA and EPA.

Monsanto’s body of falsified research and its willful poisoning of the human population on the altar of profit are tantamount to crimes against humanity. Now, thanks to the tireless efforts of those not beholden to the industry, these crimes may finally be exposed.